Summer time spruce up

     Last weekend I decided that for the sake of my sanity that I needed to put work away and spend some time doing something that I wanted to do. So I looked around and realized, it's summer time and my house could use some sprucing up. So my hubs and I finally got around to painting a chest of drawers that we had sitting in our dining room for about a year now. It's a chest of drawers from my son's first real bedroom set, solid pine and completely sturdy. I'd known I'd wanted to save it to do something with it for a long time but had never gotten around to actually doing something. 

     So off to Lowe's we went. I chose two shades of gray to compliment each other. I also bought a stencil from Hobby Lobby and some silver paint there as well. I wish I had taken a "before" photo, but here is my after photo:

And here's the top where I did stenciling. It didn't come out perfect so I may end up painting over it and re-doing the stencil but I do love the overall general work. 

After up-doing the chest of drawers I decided I needed to bring some summer colors into my home. I love having live plants in my home and flowers. Lately I've found myself drawn to succulents so I picked up several from Wal-Mart. I had been saving jars from various food containers (mostly pickle jars because my daughter is obsessive about her love for pickles) and thought planting these succulents in some of the jars and using them as a center piece on my table might look cute. And, I think I was right...look how this came out:

I also came across a couple of wall hangings that I just had to get while I was at Hobby Lobby:

And finally, I added a little more color with some new throw pillows:

I love the yellow and teal colors together. I actually saw several other pillow cases that I really wanted as well so I think another trip to Hobby Lobby will probably be in near future. 

In any case, taking a break from work-putting the laptop in a drawer and turning the work cell off was so nice and necessary!